If We Have Waited in the Darkness
by Mousme
Summary: Written for the 30 snapshots challenge. Set in the timeline of 5.04, "The End." Dean is injured on a mission, and Cas patches him up. Spoilers for all of Season 5, specifically for 5.04.


Title: **If We Have Waited in the Darkness (This Never Happened, Part I)**

Summary: Written partly for **spn_30snapshots** and partly for** animotus**, who reminded me that I had yet to write future!Dean and further requested a shoulder injury. So I killed two birds with one stone, as it were.

Prompt: #18 "Sunrise"

Warnings: A bit of swearing.

Spoilers: Up to 5.04. There are spoilers for that episode in the author's notes. Reader beware!

Word Count: 1,000

Disclaimer: Oh, how I wish they were mine. I would do so many terrible awesome things to them... Alas, they are Kripke's toys to break play with.

Neurotic Author's Note: Writing short fiction is haaaaard! I have no idea if this works. I wrote it during a slow period at work, and fiddled with it endlessly to make sure the words flowed right and weren't superfluous and I'm still not sure it works. /o\

Neurotic Author's Note #2: I don't actually know where in the timeline this is set, but I'm sort of thinking summer of 2011, when Sam hasn't actually said "yes."

Neurotic Author's Note #3: I've taken liberties with the show's timeline concerning Cas, too, the assumption being that he started his downward slide before Sam said "yes," as well.

~SPN~

_This never happened._

Twilight is usually the best time for a raid, when the cold grey of the morning begins to seep in under cover of darkness. There are few sunrises these days, but that's all to the good, really; the lack of contrast, the lack of anything other than shades of grey, all serve to let a small group move mostly unnoticed through the countryside, through the half-deserted streets that thrum with the promise of undelivered violence.

There are exceptions to every rule, Cas knows. It's a lesson he's had to learn the hard way, over and over again, and each time is like a revelation. Each time, the lesson has been learned in blood, in loss. He's behind the wheel of one of their only working trucks, peering through the mist, wishing he wasn't sober enough to drive, but thankful that he is, because Dean certainly isn't in any shape to do it. He's tense in the passenger seat, mouth tight with pain, holding his left arm up against his right shoulder by the wrist. The shotgun in his lap is a cold comfort, since he can't exactly use it one-handed, but Cas knows well enough to leave that one alone.

Neither of them speaks as they pull up in the camp, except to call out "Cristo" dutifully when Chuck steps out and challenges them, looking faded and washed out by the cool morning. Cas hauls Dean out of the truck by his good arm, holds him up as his knees buckle, waits for him to get his land legs back. They'll debrief in thirty minutes, same as usual, enough time for those who got through unwounded to unload what few supplies they managed to obtain on this run, and for the others to get their injuries tended. He nods to Chuck, who's performing a head count.

"Roscoe?" Cas shakes his head, and Chuck closes his eyes for a few seconds before turning to help unload the trucks without another word.

Cas props Dean up against a counter in what used to be a kitchenette in the cabin Dean now calls home (for whatever definition of "home" Dean uses these days), and pulls a bottle of knock-off Vicodin from his jacket pocket. He tilts two capsules into the palm of his hand, watches for a moment as they settle into the creases in his skin. He should have washed his hands —there's still blood under his fingernails, the skin pallid and filthy.

"One for you, one for me," the grin he directs at Dean doesn't reach his eyes. He doesn't quite know how to meet Dean's gaze these days. Dean says nothing, swallows the pill dry, and he does the same before bracing one hand against Dean's dislocated shoulder and the other at his back. "On three. Ready? One... two!"

The shoulder pops back into its socket with a horrifying grinding sound of cartilage and abused tendons, and Dean mostly swallows the hoarse yell of pain that tries to tear itself from him.

"Son of a bitch," he tries to breathe through the pain, his face grey, sweat beading at his hairline. "Fuckers always go for the trick shoulder. How do they know?"

"Maybe they keep records."

"Fuck."

"Maybe they just get lucky."

Cas doesn't tell Dean he needs to be more careful. He saw Roscoe go down amidst the milling throng of Croats who materialized out of nowhere, baying for blood. Saw Dean dive forward to try to pull him out long after it was too late. He resolutely doesn't think about the fact that he learned how to replace a dislocated shoulder from Sam, learned the trick of shoving the joint back into place ahead of schedule from Sam, so that Dean wouldn't have time to brace against it and make it even more painful.

"Lucky," Dean says flatly. "Thought you didn't believe in luck."

"Belief is less important than empirical evidence."

"Are you high?" The question is a serious one, and Cas is pretty sure Dean didn't mean it rhetorically, either.

"Not yet. Hold still so I can strap that for you."

He fishes a ratty sling out of the first-aid kit. It's clean, at least, if a sorry-looking specimen, and he folds it with an expertise he wishes he didn't need and binds Dean's arm tightly to his chest, ignoring his fearless leader's grunt of pain: you don't become a fearless leader by admitting to weakness, not to pain or fear or sadness that your brother hasn't spoken to you in nearly two years and that it's almost entirely your own damned fault. By virtue of being one of the only three people who knew Dean 'before' (and it's a word used exclusively to describe the world as it was when there was no Croatoan virus these days, though it has a different meaning for Dean), Cas has come to find that his role in the world is singularly hard to define. He's and partner and confidant, right-hand man and emotional scapegoat, friend and whipping-boy for the angels. There are days when it makes him dizzy.

"Too tight?" he asks, and Dean shakes his head, lips pressed tightly together. "I suppose you want to debrief now, instead of sitting and resting, the way you should."

"Has to be done. We need to re-think this whole 'before sunrise' approach to the Croats. It's obviously not taking them by surprise anymore."

"They don't make sunrises like they used to," Cas agrees blandly, and Dean snorts.

"Let's go."

"Right. Give me your arm," Cas says, knowing Dean will shake off the support long before they're in sight of the others.

As they step out into the compound, Cas looks to the sky in spite of himself.

"Would you look at that," he says, surprised and not a little humbled. "The sky is blue."


End file.
